Deborah Young

In and of itself, it is a mournfully intelligent, poetic documentary that once more seeks to link the vastness, grandeur and indifference of nature with the human horrors that Chileans have lived through. The search for meaning is so personal here (Guzman narrates most of the film in the first person) and so difficult that it is often heart-rending.

Cinematically erudite and very playful in its use of music, Enea skillfully toys with expectations to keep the viewer constantly off balance.

How this outspoken film, Bustamante’s most gripping to date, will fare domestically is an open question (it has not come out yet in Guatemala). It had a blazing bow in the Venice Days sidebar (Giornate degli Autori), where it easily grabbed the best film prize.

A gripping drama -- almost a mystery -- about ordinary people from Japanese master Kore-eda Hirokazu connects to viewers, despite an ambiguous ending that feels overly complex and arty.

Emir Kusturica's epic black comedy about Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1992 is a three-hour steamroller circus that leaves the viewer dazed and exhausted, but mightily impressed.

It is a smart and warm-hearted documentary that never tries to separate the superstar at its center from the political and cultural context, or to split John from the woman he loved and admired — and never deliberately cast shade on. It is also one of the finest portraits of these artists on film.

Several impressive action scenes sustain the tension and electrify this overlong, often hard-to-follow story.

The three main characters are all vividly sketched.

Using a simple storytelling style that grows stronger with each passing scene, Dry Season draws the viewer into its small two-character drama set in post-war Chad, while it offers a deep reflection on injustice and frustrated revenge.

Running the gamut from social comedy to actioner to war movie, Clash is an original, often quite disturbing experience to watch.

After watching Maysaloun Hamoud’s sparkling, taboo-breaking first feature In Between (Bar Bahar), audiences will have to seriously update their ideas about the lifestyle of Palestinian women in Israel.

It is all the more heart-wrenching for being realistic. Its portrait of child labor brooks no sentimentality and no cliches.

A fairly successful attempt at satire, though given the subject, there's a lot of darkness under the carpet.

Despite a warmly interacting cast that includes Jennifer Ehle as Emily’s sister and Keith Carradine as her lion-maned, lionized father, and a valiant effort on the part of Nixon and Davies to externalize the poet’s inner demons in emotional, high-tension scenes, the film can’t escape an underlying static quality that extinguishes the flame before it can get burning.

Along with the continual build-up of tension and threatened (more than shown) violence, pic is notable for its brutal depiction of the sex industry.

An uncompromising drama from one of Iran’s most outspoken directors.

A film destined to divide Manoel de Oliveira's fans but also to win him new ones, A Talking Picture is his simplest, most linear story in memory.

If the feature film reached for, and often failed to achieve, great emotions to match its imagery, the non-contemplative Imax Experience seems even farther from this goal. Vastness and infinity are all fine and good, but the beauty of the universe tends to feel monstrous and inhuman without an element of human chaos to counterbalance it.

Shot in 23 countries, the film has an amazing breadth and a relentless moral drive that will make it a reference point for this subject, whatever the audience response may be.

Singh shows a confident hand as he works with the material on multiple levels of narrative and symbolism, keeping it interesting and in focus throughout. His greatest strength, however, is Randhawa’s powerful portrayal of the shepherdess, a role that could launch a career.

Though grippingly shot and paced, its realism makes it not an easy watch. However, one never questions the horrific circumstances in which the protag finds himself and the ending provides a bitter sort of closure and enough salve on the wounds to make the story palatable.

The sheer purity of the imagery is entrancing and puts it among his finest, most uplifting works.

Kim’s Areum is edgy, multi-layered and far from docile.

The buoyant little comedy 12:08 East of Bucharest puts its finger on the problem in the best tradition of East European humor, savvy but concrete, gentle but sharp as a knife.

Low-key but spanning a symphony of disturbing themes from personal relations and wildlife conservation to the threat of war, Koji Fukada’s ‘Nagi Notes’ offers a fascinating, multi-faceted perspective on insular Japan today.

The story itself avoids the complicated structure of Matteo Garrone’s arty Gomorra, suggesting audiences will have an easier time digesting the tragedy of three brothers. But though it doesn't have Gomorra's comprehension problems, it also lacks that film's iconic cinematic imagery and seems ultimately far less memorable.

Though they have little to add to familiar genre themes, Uthaug and the screenwriters make the most of the unique location, which lends itself to jaw-dropping vistas from every camera angle.

A mystifying film that holds the audience in suspense over where it's going and what it might mean for almost its entire running time.

Stephen Frears is in full possession of his filmmaking talent in Philomena, one of his most pulled-together dramas in years.

The last sequence takes the esoterism one step farther, in a beautiful ending that seems to link European wealth to those long-ago events in Latin America.

Splashy, noisy and downright fun.

Viewers of this Venice competition title are likely to find the ideological confusion contagious and the romance pretty trite. But the camerawork and music choices are lively and may enable a younger gen to relate and discuss.

A visually exalting, emotionally horrifying view of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.

All of these ingredients should come together in a mouth-watering finale, but such is not the case; in fact, the film becomes more obvious and less psychological as it goes on.

What is most endearing is the delicacy with which writer-director Ritesh Batra reveals the hopes, sorrows, regrets and fears of everyday people without any sign of condescension or narrative trickery.

Wise beyond its years, like the teenage protag Gelsomina, Le Meraviglie (The Wonders) is a wistful but no-tears swan song recounting the disappearance of traditional rural life-style in Italy.

Perhaps the most striking thing about David Gordon Green’s Stronger is how it refuses to turn its subject into a hero or even a small-time symbol of courage, as one might legitimately expect of a survivor story, even while the world is clamoring to put him on a pedestal.

This is less a film about terrorists than an intimate portrait of boys growing up in a toxic environment. All the non-pro actors turn in natural performances, but the dark, brooding Rachid gets under the skin in the main role.

There are no heroes in Final Account, no one to empathize with. What makes it uniquely worth watching is its cast of octogenarians and nonagenarians who were eyewitnesses and in some cases active participants in the horrors of the concentration camps.

The film’s near-perfect calibration between family drama and black comedy recalls the director’s earlier features, Paris of the North and Either Way (remade in the U.S. as Prince Avalanche), but this is the one in which Sigurdsson really projects a distinctive voice.

With a compassionate eye for the downtrodden that has characterized all Gianfranco Rosi’s work, Notturno brings three years of shooting in Middle East war zones to the screen in an impressionistic collage of ordinary people caught up in conflict.

David Lynch, The Art Life will entrance the director’s fans and, who knows, inspire budding, out-of-the-box creators in an artistic coming-of-age tale, told in his own words and deliberate tones.

The story has a tendency to scatter at times, and it banks a lot on the humanity of the three main actors who have some heart-wrenching moments riding out the joys and sorrows of modern life, complicated by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Dyrholm is at her multifaceted best here in the glammed-down, uglified role of an older rock ‘n' roll star on the skids.

Despite its grim subject, the powerful storytelling projects the strongly affirmative message that it's a miracle to be alive and bear witness to those who did not survive. This memorable film, one of Techine's best, is in no way limited to gay viewers.

It’s pretty much a one-woman show for actress Erica Rivas, who brings a sense of fun to a fast-paced comedy about schizophrenia, if that’s what it is.

An enjoyable absurdist comedy.

The portrait that emerges is intimate — perhaps too intimate for film lovers who might have preferred to hear more about the star’s working methods, and fewer details about her husbands and kids.

Abu-Assad and his cinematographer Ehab Assal have every shot under control and rarely need to go overboard to convey a strong emotion.

Though the story is fictional, the imagery is grounded in a powerful documentary reality.

Kidnapped (Rapito) is one of Marco Bellocchio’s most successful films, both as a taut thriller that will capture audiences with his terribly human drama, and as a masterful reflection on the themes that the Italian director has worried and revisited over a lifetime of filmmaking: the Catholic church as an anti-liberal indoctrinating machine that steals children’s souls, the frailty of personal identity, and the struggle for liberation on an individual and societal level.

At 74, Chabrol is in full possession of his talent for elegant, understated filmmaking, though he's far from his disturbing films of the '50s and '60s.

With great delicacy, [Maryam Touzani] shows how Moroccan society censures a woman who gives birth outside marriage — not a terribly original theme, but here it is made heartrending by the superb performances of Lubna Azabal and Nisrin Erradi in the lead roles.

The film feels empty and intellectualized at the core, where it should feel powerfully emotional.

The attention given to constructing each shot makes for a hypnotic visual experience, while lack of a progressive narrative telescopes film's running time into infinity.

Result is a weird hodgepodge that has the audience doing mental somersaults in an attempt to keep up with this highly original festival head-scratcher.

An unsettling piece of filmmaking whose grimly vivid images are guaranteed to give impressionable viewers nightmares.

The tense triangle among the girl and her two moms unfolds against an interesting backdrop: a stark setting in rural Sardinia, where tall cliffs and dirt roads criss-cross a shrub-infested desert. Its general wildness is underlined in the first scene at a local bronco-busting rodeo.

Radiates a warm humanity and uplifts the spirit. Subtle rather than sentimental, it lacks easy tears though attentive viewers will find it lacerating enough.

Without sensationalism, Wuhan Wuhan makes its quiet mark through its natural approach to a culture where people appear not to rebel against the strict government lockdown.

A funny-moving story enjoyably retold with classic British understatement and just the right twist at the end.

In her first leading role, Kolesnik is as irresistible as an energy bar, exploring the Insta-queen’s shallow depths with cunning sincerity. Rather inevitably, she overshadows the rest of the pro cast.

While its frank approach is refreshing, there is a sense of too much.

In Bird Andrea Arnold once again shows she has the magic keys – in this case Franz Rogowski’s piercingly tender bird-man, and Barry Keoghan’s manically affectionate drug-dealer dad -- to extract drama, fantasy and authentic emotion from characters living on the lowest rungs of English society.

A lovely film that makes little emotional connection.

Dukhtar (Daughter) may not be 127 Hours, but Afia Nathaniel’s feature directing debut generates enough tension to fuel a harrowing real-life story while adding another unforgettable heroine to cinema from the region with Samiya Mumtaz’s measured portrayal of a Muslim woman taking charge of her life.

Among other things, the film is an extremely dense fusion of elements that make up our sense of time and memories, including collages of hundreds of old photos, grainy super 8 footage, notebooks, songs and music, sound bites and newspaper articles.

It’s a far cry from dreary or depressing, but it also doesn’t offer any easy way to enter its emotional territory. Viewers who have gone through the experience of taking care of an ailing parent or relative may identify more fully with the slow-moving story.

It is a rare director who dares to embrace the slow, meditative rhythms of a classic novel without feeling the need to modernize or accelerate it, but Davies uses the measured pace to unfold his poetic vision of the Scottish peasantry and their attachment to the land.

Though it begs for a little lightening up, a moment of irony, a wink at the audience, this dead-serious fairy tale about a mysterious young woman (and a phantom automaton straight out of Hugo) is worth watching for Geoffrey Rush’s sensitive, never pandering performance.

It’s hard to think of a less dramatic subject to fictionalize, yet in its own quiet way, Hive builds a strong storyline around the self-reliance and determination of an uneducated country woman, played with glammed-down but riveting cool by a granite-faced Yllka Gashi.

Though Sun Children lacks the visual lushness and poetry that made Children of Heaven so seductive, its condemnation of child labor and the inaccessibility of basic education to the poor comes across with great force.

Tale of Tales combines the wildly imaginative world of kings, queens and ogres with the kind of lush production values for which Italian cinema was once famous. The result is a dreamy, fresh take on the kind of dark and gory yarns that have come down to us from the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, only here they're pleasingly new and unfamiliar.

The climactic final scene at the wedding hall begins as grotesque and humiliating, then slowly the threads come together, while Burshtein mischievously plays with perceptions about whether the unfolding miracle is a fantasy or not.

Even admitting that films like Cache (Hidden), The White Ribbon and Amour have raised the bar higher and higher, Happy End feels like it’s pulling its punches and not in their league. For one thing, it’s hard to pin down the theme of the piece.

There is much to appreciate in Poitras’ low-key, down-to-business approach which employs instinctive editing choices, and not her own persona (she never appears onscreen), to build the most revealing portrait of Assange and his WikiLeaks staff in the public domain.

It packs an unsettling message of empowerment very rare in the social injustice genre.

Adding it up, the film has the same charming characters and delightfully detailed pastel artwork of its predecessor, but in exchanging Your Name’s sci-fi component for a mythical-magical story, it loses a bit of quota.

Part let's-get-it-together band saga and part road movie, the story arc is awfully familiar, but that doesn't stop it being a rollicking romp.

As in the book, the shock effect of coldly detailed incest, bestiality and sexual abuse, beatings, killings and mutilation is furiously nonstop in a film of nearly three hours. Rather than numbing the viewer, however, the parade of evil is presented in a dismaying crescendo of horror that offers no escape.

Kim Ki-duk is back in fighting form in Pieta, an intense and, for the first hour, sickeningly violent film that unexpectedly segues into a moving psychological study.

A spellbinding love letter to Hong Kong and the movies.

Refusing to offer easy answers or perspectives, Dormant Beauty is directed in such a way it doesn’t need to take a clear-cut position on the question, because like all the director’s work it has no concern with convincing people of anything, but a great deal of interest in illuminating contemporary Italian society.

Okada both wrote and directed Maquia, which showcases her ability to depict complex relationships and project delicate character arcs.

The toll the disease takes on the life of a brilliant linguistics professor is superbly detailed by Julianne Moore in a career-high performance, driving straight to the terror of the disease and its power to wipe out personal certainties and identity.

Its bow in Cannes in the Special Screenings sidebar is amply justified by two whimsical exercises in art house cinema directed by Jafar Panahi and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The other tales are quirky but mixed in impact.

Documentary has the fascination of watching an African "Judge Judy" with a more important case load. It also offers the satisfaction of seeing the law being used to change patterns of social injustice.

Lensed with great sensitivity and style and superbly acted, it has one drawback for Western audiences in its perplexing plot points based on the local culture and customs.

What The Perfect Candidate lacks in sophistication it makes up for in intuition, entwining the longtime taboos of music (especially the female voice) and women's active participation in political life in a positive storyline.

A low-structure, high-involvement Brazilian free-for-all destined to take its place among hellish prison films, Carandiru plants a fist in the viewer's stomach.

The subject of Francofonia is art as the spoils of war, and the example he gives is the period when the Louvre – called at one point “the capital of the world” – came under Nazi control. Making the barest hint about the destruction of historic artworks in Syria at the hands of ISIS, Sokurov gently reminds the viewer why all this is terribly relevant today.

Though shot from the Palestinian P.O.V., the Dutch/Palestinian Film Foundation co-production is remarkably balanced, offering a convinced message of hope for the future.

Though it has far less outright violence than Gomorrah, whose oppressive criminal atmosphere it shares, Matteo Garrone's Dogman is just as intense a viewing experience, one that will have audiences gripping their armrests with its frighteningly real portrayal of a good man tempted by the devil.

It feels like every script-reader in the Italian-Swiss-German-Albanian-Kosovo coproduction cut out a line of dialogue in each scene, leaving behind an irritating silence and an enigmatic puzzle for the audience to second-guess.

Fatal Assistance is a chilling indictment of how billions of dollars in aid were squandered or lost, and how aid and politics are inextricably linked.

Simplicity and maturity of vision are the virtues here, good qualities but perhaps a little too understated for major attention-grabbing.

It is irresistibly laugh-out-loud and feel-good.

Lasse Hallstrom's breezy, fast-paced, somewhat loose-ended account of how he (Irving) did it offers a surprisingly layered vehicle for a maniacally conniving Richard Gere, backed up by a superb Alfred Molina as his accomplice.